Not on display
- Artist
- George Frederic Watts 1817–1904
- Medium
- Oil paint on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 648 × 521 mm
frame: 990 × 863 × 90 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Bequeathed by Sir William Bowman Bt 1898
- Reference
- N01561
Display caption
This is one of a number of half-length self-portraits by G F Watts, who was one of the greatest portrait painters of the Victorian era. In this picture he assumes the attitude of the bohemian artist, wearing a dark slouch hat and black velvet coat. This style of dress reflects Watts’s life with his friends, the Prinseps, at Little Holland House in Kensington where he lived from 1850 until 1875.
Watts later wrote ‘I paint myself constantly, that is to say whenever I want to make an experiment in method or colour and I am not in the humour to make a design’.
Gallery label, August 2004
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Explore
- objects(23,363)
-
- clothing and personal items(5,879)
-
- hat(1,444)
- beard(207)
- self-portraits(873)
- arts and entertainment(6,694)
-
- artist, painter(2,230)
You might like
-
George Frederic Watts Eustace Smith
c.1870–80 -
Charles Samuel Keene Self-Portrait
date not known -
George Frederic Watts and assistants The Court of Death
c.1870–1902 -
George Frederic Watts Russell Gurney
c.1875–8 -
George Frederic Watts Eveleen Tennant, later Mrs F.W.H. Myers
exhibited 1880 -
George Frederic Watts Life’s Illusions
1849 -
George Frederic Watts Augusta, Lady Castletown
c.1846 -
Henri Fantin-Latour Self-Portrait
1860 -
George Frederic Watts Mammon
1884–5 -
George Frederic Watts Miss Mary Kirkpatrick Brunton
1841 -
George Frederic Watts Eve Repentant
c.1865–97 -
George Frederic Watts Mrs George Augustus Frederick Cavendish-Bentinck and her Children
exhibited 1860 -
John Pettie Portrait of the Artist
1882 -
George Frederic Watts Faith
c.1890–6 -
George Frederic Watts The Spirit of Christianity
1873–5